


Haunted by The Ghost of You

by RemotelyPlausible



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Coping, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, but like sad pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RemotelyPlausible/pseuds/RemotelyPlausible
Summary: One of the many near-death experiences faced by our lovable FBI agents goes wrong, suddenly it’s not only near death. Mulder has to cope with his grief, or at least try to.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not all possible triggers will be tagged as that would reveal things about future chapters but if self-harm, death, and grieving trigger you, I’d advise you click away I’ll have fluffy content for you soon. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Don't own 'em, never have, never will. Glad I don't, seems like a big responsibility. Don't sue me, that'd be a lot to deal with.
> 
> Thank you to my beta for her endless support and lack of judgment.

The monitor beeps steadily, he’s grown used to it over the last several hours. He knows it’s coming to end. His cheeks are almost dry now. His eyes are out of tears to shed. He wants to cry and scream, to destroy this room, to scream at her for not being awake. 

No. He couldn’t scream at her. 

If only she were awake right now. If only he could hug her small, warm body and feel her hug back instead of fall limp in his arms back against the scratchy sheets. He wishes he could take her home. He wishes he could lay her down in her silky-soft bed and watch her sleep in peace. In the morning he could tend to her wounds. Maybe she’d let him stay the night, to be sure she is safe. Of course, she is far from safe. 

...

He hears Margaret scream from down the hall. He pretends he doesn't. He is frozen in place. He cannot leave her side, not even for a moment. Any moment could be her last. The world has narrowed to this room. Maybe he’ll be trapped here forever, maybe he died and this is his own personal Hell, he thinks. Not knowing what’s going to happen, having only a modicum of hope remaining for her survival is Hell. 

The air conditioning unit under the window creates a chilling draft. He has felt cold for hours. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t shift out of the path of the breeze. An icy chill runs through his veins as he feels her fading presence. He can no longer hear the voices across the hall. 

Everything has shrunk down in the worst possible way.

He cannot imagine tomorrow, doesn’t want to.

If he stays with her she’ll survive this too, he thinks. Melissa told him she needed his strength once when she was in yet another hospital room. That too had been horrifying. He remembers it like it was yesterday, especially in times like this. He represses the memories of her exhausted, comatose self in a hospital gown while they run off on cases. He thinks if he didn’t he wouldn’t be able to make the conscious choice to allow her to keep working with him. They both know this job is dangerous but putting her into the hands of peril over and over is selfish. 

Margaret Scully bursts into the room. Her eyes instantly fall to her unconscious daughter. Her shoulders drop until they are wilting. In a perversion of relaxation all her muscles from running here ease. Her posture weakens, her eyes dim from afraid to utterly devastated. 

The terror is still there but it has been overcome with a sickening sorrow.

Mrs. Scully looks just as Mulder did an hour ago. 

Her shoulders sag. She looks tired already. It has been a long night for the both of them. 

He knows her world is only Dana Katherine Scully right now too. 

He stands to offer her his chair, she is her daughter, after all, she needs this moment as much as he does and he has already been here for hours. She ignores his offer, doesn’t even notice he is offering. Maggie walks to Scully’s bedside and sinks to the floor. She reaches for Scully’s hand and clasps it tightly. Mulder knows she is afraid of letting go, he understands.

“Stay with us, dear.” She is whispering and clutching Scully's hand. Mulder can see the glimmer of a tear before she wipes it away. 

Maybe she believes it will all be okay if she simply refuses to acknowledge it. He understands that too. 

...

“You can’t-” He takes a deep breath,

“You can’t let her die. I-... I _love_ her.”

He is unaware that he is yelling. He shouldn’t yell at a doctor. Scully is a doctor. 

Scully _was_ a doctor, he corrects himself in his head.

No. No. No. 

The only thing he can feel is the rapid pounding of his heart against his chest.

Scully is a doctor. 

He still has a chance, right? 

There has to be a possibility that she’s alive. She has to be alive. 

She can’t die. He won’t let her. And to think he _knew_ she was dying and he... He caused this. He didn’t save her in time. This time he wasn’t the knight in shining armor she deserves. So many times she’s been his heroine, his savior. She would have taken control of the whole damn hospital to save him, he knows it. He didn’t do that for her. Why didn’t he try harder? She would have known what to do. He does not.

“I’m sorry sir, we can’t do anything. She’s gone, I’m sorry.” The man in blue scrubs says softly. He’s just as kind as Scully but that does nothing to soothe him.

He is spiraling. His world is spinning down and down and … down. 

Please make it stop.

Please God make it stop. 

She believes in God. Why can’t he save her just one more time? For him? Please?

She has survived so much. She survived an abduction. She has lived through far more than most. She has been kidnapped and abused. She has had cancer and gone through pregnancy. She has survived the truly unimaginable, the impossible, and yet, she can’t survive this? 

If there is a God and he has saved her all these times, why not now? She deserves the whole world on a silver platter, he knows that. If he knows that, then surely, God must know that.

He still has hope. But in the back of his mind, the awareness of her death is rapidly setting in. His stomach churns, the nausea suddenly kicking in. What if there are no more cases? Scratch that. He can live just fine with no more cases so long as she is safe. What if there are no more head-under-the-chin hugs and movie nights?

What if, worst of all, there is no Scully to take care of tomorrow morning? If she is not there to bring soup to or even her limp hand to hold. 

He was spiraling before but not like this. No, this is so much worse. He thinks he’ll vomit right here in the harshly lit hall onto the cold linoleum. He swallows bile. He has to do something but he’s stuck. His feet rooted into the ground. He needs to do something. 

God.

Fucking dammit.

Why can’t he move? Why can’t he fucking move? ‘Mulder, move, run, scream, anything dammit.’ he thinks through the haze. He knows what she would say right now. He can picture her standing behind him like in every investigation they did together.

Together.

They’ll never stand together again. 

He knew this was going to happen but that does nothing to lessen the blow. 


	2. Chapter 2

A belt cuts into his waist. The apartment is cold. He can’t remember if he locked the door or not. He doesn’t care. 

Mulder crawls into bed, or rather, onto it. He doesn’t bother getting under the covers or brushing his teeth or taking off his dirty clothes, still marked with bloodstains. He just sits.

Before he even realizes what his physical body is doing his knees are to his chest, his arms encircling them. Tears slip from his eyes, almost unconsciously.

He remains completely silent. 

The darkness makes his home feel like vacuous space. A siren wails its painful call outside the window. It reminds him of a few hours ago. It reminds him of his arrival at the hospital. His chest aches. 

The physical symptoms of shock are taking their toll and wreaking havoc on his body. He cannot contain the bombshell of all that has happened tonight, the worst night of his life, he thinks, at the same time he no longer has the energy to do anything with the shock. It fills him, seeps into his bones, and makes his insides feel like soup that has been left out in the cold, no longer can she be his thermos. 

Mulder is numb. His brain is empty. It makes him seethe with a combination of anger and heartache. 

Slowly his body begins to rock back and forth on the bed. It does not ask his consent but he wouldn’t have the willpower to deny it anyway. To and fro he sways softly, almost imperceptibly. If Scully were here she would tell him this is a normal response to extreme stress; he knows that he’s a psychologist, but science always sounds better coming from her lips.

The way he’s sitting has left the knees of his pants soaked with tears. 

Maybe it’s the shock, maybe it’s the grief, or maybe it’s the exhaustion but his whole body feels cold and numb. He doesn’t bother processing his emotions or sorting his thoughts. It’s all too much right now. There’s no space in his head to organize, only to absorb, and whatever this mental goo is it feels worse than any alien slime he’s ever touched. The knowledge of months to come absorbing to sticky sadness feels worse than the prospect of bathing in Tooms’ bile. He laughs at that thought through the tears.

In an attempt to cope, Mulder's brain provides him with something happy, something that doesn’t make him want the floor to turn to an endless swimming pool for him to drown in. 

Mulder thinks of Scully. Thinks of a time a few years ago when they were shuffling through piles of paperwork. He remembers he gave her an X-file to read and when she finished she tossed the manila folder onto her desk, sighed, and told him everything wrong with it. She talked about the medical examiner’s inability to find a cause of death and when she started listing all the poisons that could dissolve in a victim's body “Iocane powder, potassium chloride, maitotoxin, …” Mulder couldn’t help but fantasize about taking her out to dinner. Her hair was fluffy that day and he wished he would have touched it. He remembers she wore a navy blue blazer that day that made her hair look extra red and her eyes look the brightest shade of blue. She laughed at his theories. Told him he was “entirely irrational”. 

He remembers adjusting her necklace in the elevator on their way home. She blushed. He loved it. Mulder remembers not caring what their next assignment was, so long as he got to be with her.   
Sleep does not come with his permission, he merely falls into it as a result of the exhaustion. This day has wrung him dry.

His final thoughts as his bone-weary body slips into sleep are that perhaps when he wakes tomorrow he will find birds chirping and a voicemail from his partner and it will all have been some sort of evil fever trip. It’s the only way he will ever be able to sleep again, with the hope that tomorrow will not be overflowing with the gloom he knows it will be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one is short, and the soup metaphor is weird but, I hope you masochists like it anyway. As always, kudos and comments are very much appreciated. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I give you more, sadness sluts

Sunlight pours in from the window. Oh shoot, he forgot to close the blinds last night… Wait, what time is it? He must be late for work, why hasn’t Scully called? Scully calling usually wakes him up. 

He groans. Looking down at his clothes he realizes he’s still dressed for work. What’s more, Mulder’s clothes are smattered with bloodstains. That’s not right. The previous night comes tumbling back to him. 

Scully.

He needs to visit Scully. It’s already late. He should bring her flowers, maybe pick up fresh clothes at her place. 

Then the final part of his night comes rolling back, almost like his brain was trying to hold the memory out of reach. He understands now why his mind would confiscate it. It’s far too much to bear. Flashbacks of the hospital hallway rush back. He remembers the man in the blue scrubs telling him she’s gone. He remembers watching the chilly linoleum swirl in his mind as the world capsized and sank down.

He remembers coming home and feeling numb. 

A few moments ago he was in ignorant bliss, if only he could go back. His brain flashes him an image of Scully in pain and then her body in the hospital bed. Even thinking her name hurts. Mulder’s face feels sticky. It must be from the tears he shed last night. 

Everything aches. It's all too much. He can't handle today. The grief is even harder to manage when he isn’t sleep deprived and in shock. If he can just get himself back into the unconscious world of sleep that would be so much better. 

The love of his life is gone, Mulder thinks. No one will ever compare to Scully. That name again. It sends him spiraling.

The trauma from the previous night plays ad nauseum behind his eyes. Her body lying on the asphalt, blood running from her wounds. The pain behind her eyes and the promises he made as they drove to the hospital. Mulder will never forgive himself. He can never forgive himself for putting her in that situation. Permanently, he is debased. To see her worried eyes hurt like white-hot metal stabbing into his torso. Mulder’s chest feels tight. His eyes grow wet and soon tears are dampening the pillow. He sobs. He doesn’t stay silent. He screams into the pillow. He convulses and howls, shaking to his core until his throat is dry and sore. Only then does he start to feel tired enough to fall back to sleep. The only way to abate the agony is to go back to sleep. 

He shuts his eyes and focuses on how tired he is. He focuses on how sore his body is and tries desperately not to think of her. His head hurts from crying so aggressively. More tears hit the pillow. 

Mulder's clothes are sticking to his body, mixing blood, sweat, and tears on his skin. His mouth is dry and it tastes terrible. He has to ignore it. 

To his comfort, Mulder still has plenty of residual exhaustion from the night before, exacerbated by his violent sobbing that getting to sleep only takes a few minutes. 

He'll do anything to skip over this day.

...

The sheets feel too warm. His body is covered in sweat, dirt, and asphalt grit. He vaguely remembers sliding against the road last night and seeing gravel in the abrasions. There was no time to worry about it though. 

Mulder forces himself out of bed, his legs feel shaky. 

He starts to strip off his dirty clothes as he stumbles to the answering machine. He doesn’t let himself think because he knows if he does, he’ll think about her and he can't do that yet, he isn't ready.

There's a message from Skinner telling him to pick up Scully's things whenever he's ready. His voice is far from stringent, it sounds somber, rattled even, but it's obvious he's trying to sound professional. Mulder isn't ready, not even a little bit. But, he needs to pick up her stuff regardless. He needs to be the one to collect her things. And maybe, it's best to do it before the grief knocks him off his feet again. 

Maybe he'll show up and she'll be there, waiting. She'll ask him what's wrong and he'll tell her he had the worst nightmare last night and ask if she wants to go out for coffee later. It'll all be okay. 

He starts on the buttons of his dress shirt, there's another message, this time from Maggie. She has invited him over to pick up anything he might want from her apartment and asked if he'd like to get lunch. She is grieving too. Lunch sounds nice, he only hopes he can survive it without losing it again. He feels terrible for Maggie, it’s his fault her daughter is dead after all. The mere idea that Maggie would forgive him and want to get through this together makes Mulder feel the tiniest bit better. He knows deep down that he’ll never get over it but maybe he can help her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to make this longer but I gave up. Does this count as MulderTorture? (Sorry, a bit new to the fandom)
> 
> Your kudos and comments make my day and are, as always, very much appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is subject to change, I haven't decided if I like it. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are very much appreciated :)


End file.
